


Three Times Tony Stark Traveled with the Doctor

by sahiya



Category: Doctor Who, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 22:55:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/pseuds/sahiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just what it says on the tin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Times Tony Stark Traveled with the Doctor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yamx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yamx/gifts).



> Happy Holidays, Yamx! Thanks for all the betas.
> 
> This is sequel to [Time after Time](http://archiveofourown.org/works/998781). The third part will make more sense if you've read that first (but you probably don't have to, strictly speaking).

_I. Fifteen_

Tony was fifteen years old and already at MIT when his father died. He went home to Malibu for the funeral, but there was nothing for him there, and so a week later he was back in Cambridge. 

He’d always been a punk-ass kid, far too smart and far too rich for his own good. But now he had a chip on his shoulder the size of Manhattan and no one to answer to. Obie didn’t give a shit what Tony did as long as he didn’t get in the way of him taking control of Stark Industries. All things considered, Tony was on the path to some serious self-destruction when he came home one evening from a really _weird_ experience to find a blue box in his front yard and a man in a bowtie waiting for him in his apartment.

Some people would’ve freaked out about this. Tony just got pissed. “What the hell?” he demanded.

“Tony Stark!” the man exclaimed, rubbing his hands together. “I’m the Doctor, nice to meet you. Like how you handled those Zygons earlier, love your brain, brains are cool. I have a ship; she travels in space _and_ time. Want to come along?”

Tony shouldn’t have believed him. But even though he’d been telling himself that what he’d seen that evening was just a belated Halloween prank by a rival lab, he somehow knew it wasn’t. 

“Maybe,” he said, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Impress me.”

The Doctor grinned and threw open the door to his ship. 

It was bigger on the inside. Much, much bigger on the inside. 

“Say it,” the Doctor murmured, as he passed by Tony to skip up the stairs. “Everyone does,” he called back over his shoulder.

“She’s beautiful,” Tony said, staring upwards at the console and the glowing column of light overhead. 

The Doctor stopped and stared at him, “Well, that’s not quite what I expected,” he said, “but it’ll do. Welcome aboard the TARDIS, Tony Stark. Next stop, everywhere!”

It took Tony about five minutes, tops, to realize that the TARDIS wasn’t like any technology he’d ever seen before. She made his AI look shockingly primitive (because she wasn’t AI at all, the Doctor informed him sharply, sounding offended on his ship’s behalf). But even though she was alien, utterly and completely alien, she was the most beautiful thing Tony had ever seen. He stood staring up at the column - the time rotor, the Doctor said it was called - trying to put a name to what he was feeling. 

It took him years to recognize it for what it really was: falling in love. Tony Stark fell in love for the first time when he was fifteen, and it was with the TARDIS. He liked to think his love was not entirely unrequited, even if it was doomed to remain unconsummated.

“You know,” the Doctor said a few hours later, “most of my companions want to go places, not sit around in the TARDIS and admire her wiring.”

“Most of your companions are idiots,” Tony replied. He was lying on his back beneath the console, hands cradling the back of his own head as he gazed up through the wiring to the time rotor overhead. 

“Untrue,” the Doctor said, sprawling out beside Tony in a tangle of too-long limbs. “I don’t take idiots with me.”

Tony snorted. “Almost everyone is an idiot when you stand them next to me.” He sat up to look the Doctor in the eye. “Next to you, too, I’d guess. Don’t you get tired of it? Don’t you just get _so sick_ of listening to them? You have more brains in your pinky than they do in their whole head, and you’re supposed to pretend that they _matter_.”

The Doctor looked at him. “Because they do matter,” he said quietly. “In twelve hundred years, Tony Stark, I’ve never met anyone who didn’t matter.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Is this supposed to be a life lesson of some kind?” he asked. “Am I supposed to be a changed man now?”

“Nope,” the Doctor said, and sprang to his feet. “I don’t do life lessons. Life lessons are boring. I prefer to make all my own mistakes, and I think you do, too, don’t you?”

“I guess,” Tony said. 

“Good, because you’ll make some whoppers before you’re done. Not that I can talk, you really don’t want to meet my mistakes. But come on, we can’t just sit here admiring the TARDIS all day, you’ll make her blush. Want to meet Galileo? Now _there’s_ a man you can’t call an idiot.” The Doctor bounded up the stairs, and after one last lingering glance upward, Tony followed him. 

Meeting Galileo didn’t sound like it would suck. 

_II. After Afghanistan_

“Where the fuck were you?” were the first words out of Tony’s mouth when he saw the Doctor after Afghanistan. He landed the TARDIS in Tony’s lab two days after he got back, and Tony thought he was damn lucky he didn’t get a punch to the jaw as a greeting. 

The Doctor sighed. “I’m sorry, Tony. I really am.”

“You’re sorry?” Tony repeated, voice rising with every word. “You’re _sorry_? That’s nice. But _sorry_ didn’t do me a damn bit of good when I was trapped in a cave, being _tortured_. Aren’t daring rescues your speciality? Where the fuck were you?”

The Doctor simply stood, back straight, looking at him. “When you’re me,” he said, “you know things. There are certain points in time, certain events, that have to happen. You, Tony Stark, your captivity, everything that happened to you - that was a fixed point. I couldn’t interfere, not then. It had to happen.”

“It had to happen,” Tony repeated. He thought he’d handled everything remarkably well so far, but hearing those words from the Doctor’s mouth infuriated him. “It had to happen. I’m kidnapped and tortured and I have a hunk of fucking metal in my chest, and you have the balls to stand there and tell me that you couldn’t interfere because _it had to happen_?”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “That hunk of metal in your chest is going to change the world. Without it, Earth has no future.”

That shut him up. The Doctor had a way of doing that, Tony reflected. Not many people could shut him up, or dared to try, but the Doctor could and did. It was one of the many things Tony liked about him.

“Okay, fine,” Tony said, turning away toward the unfinished project on the workbench. He was still trying to remember what he’d been doing before Afghanistan. Most of it was incredibly irrelevant now. “So what the hell are you doing here?”

“I came to tell you that I’m proud of you.”

Tony almost dropped the socket wrench he was holding. “I’m sorry, what?” he said, turning. 

“I’m proud of you for what you’ve done,” the Doctor said. He rocked back on his heels and then paced slowly over to stand directly in front of Tony. “Tell me, did you ever wonder why I chose one of the foremost makers of weapons in the twenty-first century to travel with me? I don’t like guns and I don’t like weapons. You know that. But I knew what would happen, and I knew what you would become someday. Who you would become.”

Tony didn’t like where this was going. “So, what? All of this - my kidnapping, this thing in my chest, my decision to shut down Stark Industries’ weapons production - this was all fated? I had no choice at all?”

“No,” the Doctor said, firmly. “Your kidnapping and the invention of the arc reactor were fixed. Your decisions once you were back are your own. Though there were . . . good odds, shall we say. And I’m proud of you for them,” he added, “and also sorry that I couldn’t be of more help. I wish I could have been.”

Tony gave a shrug. “Whatever, Doc. Shoulda, woulda, coulda.” It wasn’t like the Doctor was the first person in his life to let him down, and he had a much better excuse than his father ever had.

“Indeed,” the Doctor said. “But I’m here now, and I thought you might like a trip.”

Tony shook his head. “I’m sorta busy here, got a few things going - completely changing the course of my company, for one thing, apparently changing the world for another. Thanks but no thanks.”

“Time machine, Tony,” the Doctor said, in an unusually gentle voice. “I’ll have you back before anyone realizes you’re gone. You need a break.”

Tony snorted. “And traveling with you would be a break, Doc? Not in my experience.”

“It doesn’t have to be all _run for your life_ ,” the Doctor said, indignantly. “In fact, we don’t have to go anywhere if you don’t want to. The TARDIS could use some tinkering. Her temporal phasers are all out of whack, and I finally managed to run down the right couplers. I thought we might park her somewhere quiet and do some work on her.”

 _Goddammit_. The Doctor knew him too well. Tony glared at him. “Playing dirty now, are you?” The Doctor shrugged. Tony glared some more, but it was a lost cause. He’d never been able to resist an invitation to tinker with the TARDIS, and the Doctor knew it. “All right, fine. But I’m still pissed as hell at you.”

“Message received,” the Doctor said, but he was smiling. His hand landed on Tony’s shoulder and he steered him toward the TARDIS. “Come on. We wouldn’t want to keep the old girl waiting.”

_III. With Bruce_

Introducing Bruce to the Doctor was like Christmas, only better. Tony hadn’t actually thought much about it until it happened; he’d taught himself early on not to think about the Doctor when he wasn’t there, because he didn’t want to waste his life wondering when the Doctor would show up again or if he ever would. But the moment JARVIS interrupted him to let him know that the TARDIS had landed in Bruce’s lab, he realized that part of him had been waiting for this all along. 

It was, in Tony’s expert opinion, the best trip he’d ever taken with the Doctor. He got to tinker with the TARDIS - always a treat - while Bruce let the big guy out for a nice romp, and then the three of them went for tapas on New Barcelona, which turned out to be Tony’s kind of place. Not all that surprising, he supposed; the original Barcelona back on Earth was a favorite destination of his. He was a fan of any place that let you dance all night and sleep all afternoon. But none of that was why this trip was his favorite. 

It was his favorite because for the first time since Tony had met him, he got to see Bruce Banner _happy_.

Tony didn’t make a habit of worrying about people who weren’t Pepper, but he worried about Bruce. He never said so, of course, he wasn’t that guy, but he did the best he could in other ways, like the tricked-out lab and the ridiculous salary (not that Bruce wasn’t worth every penny, but if his other R&D scientists ever found out what Bruce made there would be a mass rebellion) and the place to live. And all of that meant that he’d gotten to see Bruce Banner content and satisfied and that was nice. 

But it wasn’t as nice as seeing him really and truly happy, smiling with a slight glow from the sangria he and Tony were splitting (the Doctor took one swig and spit it back into his cup). Afterward they wandered down the main boulevard toward the water, doing a little shopping. The night air of New Barcelona was warm and humid, but back on Earth, Christmas wasn’t so far away, and the number of people Tony had to get something for - _personally_ get something for, not just farm out to whatever PA Pepper had hired that month to replace the last one he’d scared off - had approximately quadrupled this year. 

The Doctor was like a puppy, running off ahead and then coming back before running off again. Tony watched Bruce and waited until the Doctor had left them again, and then he said, “So, is this what you’re like when you let the big guy out to play?”

Bruce turned away from the shop window he’d been perusing and frowned at Tony. “What I’m like?” he repeated. 

“Yeah, you know.” Tony gestured at him. “You’re all - giddy.”

“Giddy?” Bruce repeated, eyebrows rising. 

“Well, maybe not giddy,” Tony said, though he thought that Bruce was awfully close. For Bruce, anyway, if not for most other people. “But happy, definitely. Cheerful, even. Which, don’t take this personally, big green, but that’s not usually a word I’d use to describe you.”

“No, I guess not,” Bruce said. “I . . . don’t know. I’ve never done it before. It’s not easy to find the right kind of space in New York, you know that, and before that - well, I would’ve never even considered it.”

“Hmm,” Tony said. 

“What _hmm_? No _hmm_ , Tony!”

Tony widened his eyes in the very picture of innocence. “What?”

“I know that look,” Bruce said, pointing at him. “That’s your _I’m Tony Stark and I’ve got a problem to solve_ look.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Tony said airily. “Hey, look, churros!”

“Don’t play dumb,” Bruce said, even as Tony bought one of the churros with some of the currency the Doctor had given them. “It doesn’t look right on you. The last thing I want is for you to - to build an adamantium playroom for the other guy in the Tower.”

“ _That_ ,” Tony said, around a mouthful of sugary fried dough (and thank goodness the important things never really changed), “is a _brilliant_ idea. I’m embarrassed I didn’t have it myself.” Except, of course, he had, about three hours earlier. Better for Bruce to say it outloud himself to begin with, though. 

See? Pepper was wrong. He was totally a people person. They just had to be _his_ people, and there weren’t that many of those. A grand total of eight in the whole universe. 

“No, Tony,” Bruce said. “It’s not a good idea. It’s one thing in the TARDIS - he was never going to hurt anyone there. But in the Tower? God only knows what could happen.”

“Eat your churro,” Tony said, thrusting it at him. 

“ _Tony_.”

“Eat your churro,” Tony insisted, “and stop borrowing trouble. Look, an adamantium playroom in the Tower might not be the solution, but it’s a place to start. And you can’t blame me for wanting to try,” he added, when Bruce frowned. “Look me in the eye and tell me you’re not at least, like, ten times happier right now than you usually are. Less anxiety, less stress, less simmering rage. I can see it.”

Bruce sighed. “You have me there. I just can’t see how my happiness is worth the risk.”

And _that_ , Tony thought, was the fundamental problem with Bruce Banner. Not that he didn’t sympathize. 

“Oi, you two,” the Doctor said, running up behind them and throwing an arm around each of them. “Your dillydallying is going to make us miss it.”

“Our what?” Tony said. 

“Miss what?” Bruce said. 

“The New Barcelona Night Swim with the jellyfish. Well, I say jellyfish, they’re not really jellyfish, only thing you’ve got that even comes close, though. The point is, it’s happening right now!”

“Just go with it,” Tony told Bruce, and let the Doctor drag them both down to the water. Which was, Tony saw with some shock, _glowing_. 

It took him a moment to realize that the water wasn’t glowing, but whatever was in the water - the not-jellyfish - was. It was glowing in all the colors of the rainbow and a few colors that weren’t in the rainbow at all, blinking in and out and slipping all around each other. Up and down the beach, people were pulling their clothes off, laughing and calling to each other as they splashed into the water. 

Apparently bathing suits were entirely optional in the New Barcelona Night Swim. 

“Well, don’t just stand there,” the Doctor said, as he started loosening his clothes, including his bowtie. “Chance of a lifetime!” Naked at last, he ran off down the beach and into the water, making a great tidal wave as he dove down among the shimmering lights. 

“You do know he’s a nutcase, right?” Bruce said, gazing contemplatively after him. 

“Yep,” Tony said, and stripped his shirt off over his head. “Come on, big green. When in Rome.”

Hours later, they returned to the TARDIS, damp and rather sandy. Tony wanted a shower more than he’d ever wanted anything, he thought, except maybe for a cheeseburger after Afghanistan. He had sand in places even he didn’t mention.

“Where to next?” the Doctor asked, immediately bounding up the stairs to the console. “Maybe we could do New New Venice - been a while since I was there - or, I know, the tech bazaar on Ancient Haven, you’d both love that. What do you say?”

Tony glanced at Bruce and saw his own thoughts echoed back at him. “Actually, Doc,” Tony said, climbing the stairs. “I think we’d better head home.”

“Home?” the Doctor said. “After one trip?” He frowned. “Are you sure you’re really Tony Stark? Not a Life Model Decoy or a Flesh avatar?”

“One hundred percent sure,” Tony said with a grin. “The thing is, we’ve kind of got this Avengers thing happening back home, and we sort of need to be there for it. It’s not exactly a fulltime job, but we’re kind of on-call 24/7.”

“Ah yes, of course,” the Doctor said, smiling faintly. “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.” He sighed. “Well, all right, if you insist. I suppose I had better be visiting Bruce’s younger self, anyway,” he added, and threw a lever on the console that caused the TARDIS to shudder. 

Mere seconds later they were back where they started, in Bruce’s lab. The clock on the wall indicated that they’d only been gone about three minutes. 

“There you are,” the Doctor said. “Right on time.”

“Thanks, Doc,” Tony said. “And you know - _mi casa es su casa._ Though I’d prefer you use the front door next time.”

The Doctor wrinkled his nose. “Seems unlikely, and I never make promises I don’t intend to keep. Good luck with the whole saving the world thing.”

“You could always stop in, you know,” Tony pointed out. “We could use the help, and alien invasions are sort of your specialty.”

“Maybe,” the Doctor said. “But you lot seem to have it well in hand, and I think I’d rather stay off SHIELD’s radar. Worse than Torchwood, they are.”

“Fair point,” Tony said. “Until next time, then.”

“Until next time,” the Doctor agreed, and disappeared inside the TARDIS. Tony pulled Bruce back, and together they watched as it faded, wheezing, in and out of sight until it finally disappeared altogether. 

For a long moment, silence reigned. Then Bruce said, “So that’s it? He drops out of the sky, turns everything upside down, and now you and I go back to normal?”

“Yup,” Tony said, heading for the door. Plans for the big guy’s playroom were already turning in his head, and he wanted to get them down before he lost them. 

Bruce shook his head. “How do you do it?”

Tony paused in the doorway and looked back at him. “Practice,” he said, smiling faintly. “Lots and lots of practice.”

_Fin._


End file.
